Marcin Drewicz: WARSZAWIAK GÓRAL WITH A answer ON THE Urbanist task “Repolonization of Warsaw” by Sebastian Piton: a small “for yes” and a small “for no”. Part 2: What is conventional Polish architecture?
Sebastian Pitoń wants to kind of pollone this "gift of the russian Nation for Socialist Poland", that is, the Palace of Culture and Science, so his abroad russian message is translated into a Polish, national and Catholic message, by placing certain, truly unexpected objects on the Palace itself (sic! about which next) and above all by decently building the full space around it, in the quadrangle of Marszałkowska, Świętokrzyska, Emilia Plater and the Jerusalem Avenue.
Let's compare today's realities. In the mediate of the 20th century, for the area east of Poland, there was no another nation in public circulation, specified as the “great russian nation”, in Polish, in short: “rusek”, until the beginning of the 20th century besides “kacap” (sic!). It was unthinkable to consider – as it is present – who is there, for example, a Ukrainian, who is Belarusian, and if he is any different than simply Russian-speaking.
In those realities, the translation that “it is besides a Ukrainian-patriot, but Russian-speaking” was at best incomprehensible. Like today, it is incomprehensible to the alleged dungs who are on the blocks of Donbas, erstwhile individual urges them to “evacue themselves to the Ukrainian side” (ru. gdat’ – wait).
Anyway, that's where the power was generated in the Soviets, in Bolshevia, due to the fact that personally, Joseph Stalin imposed this full Palace of Culture and much more than just any palace.
We are all utilized to the fact that this vast space around the Palace of Culture remains empty. Remember, erstwhile planting the ground for the Palace and for the square around it both the devastated and/or burnt construction of Warsaw I was removed, as well as these supposedly in a large number of tenement houses, however, comparatively surviving from the warfire. And what about their architectural features were the tenement houses and another buildings, you can take a general concept by looking at the confederate feathers of the Jerusalem Avenue other the Palace and delving south into those quarters of the streets.
The fresh skyscrapers were located and erected somewhat outside of this space straight dominated by the Palace, i.e. in the general west of Emilia Plater Street. The ideas of putting them closer to the Palace are earlier. Thus, Mr.Inż. Sebastian Pitoń truly amazed us with his overall task proposed right now. However, it besides cites attempts to address the problem of the improvement of this space by the predecessors.
We were not amazed by the developers of this "block" called the "Modern Art Museum", located close the corner of ul. Marszałkowska and Świętokrzyska Street, due to the fact that this 1 occupies only a part of the mentioned broad void. There is besides to be another “clock” called “black container” by Mr Pitonia. Mr Pitoń rightly speaks in this context of the demolition of Warsaw spaces.
Both of them – the first of them with a museum or exhibition intent – "blocks" or "boxes" are a good measurement of the vanity of the times in which we live, due to the fact that they no longer constitute any architecture at all – namely, 4 smooth walls and flat roofing; this, like techno-rap, is no longer music, but simply a band of tired sounds produced artificially.
But not the 1 already exhibited at Marszałkowska Street “klocek” scares in present-day Warsaw. It is worth remembering that in the same fresh years 2 another akin unworked “locks-boxes” were erected “on the smallest line of resistance” and next to each another (!), on the late open area of the Warsaw Citadel, both for museum purposes – the Museum of the past of Poland and the Museum of the Polish Army (in the fresh headquarters). There are even more akin “boxes” in Warsaw, to which we halt here.
And Sebastian Pitoń wants to start by covering this "box" close the Palace of Culture with a quarry with rich ornamentation straight referring to the deepest traditions of Polish architecture (but besides moving on to further activities); since even russian architects who "in the west were never" (quote from the above-mentioned film) did likewise for finishing the various segments of the Palace of Culture, having previously held, i.e. in the autumn of 1951 a suitable local imagination in respective historical Polish urban centres (because designers of modern glass skyscrapers did not do anything like that!).
Yes, we know – Romanism is Romanic, Gothic is Gothic or French, and Renaissance with Baroque is Italian. All these styles (and others also) in different countries have found their applications and varieties; the most baroque since it is from the times virreinatos He besides represented in America, especially Mexico, Peru, but even in the far Asian Philippines.
From the above-mentioned movie by Mr.Inż. Pitonia and from his statements we can conclude that it is the Renaissance with its flats in our average rainy-snow climate with roofs and with roofs covering these roofs with richly formed attists that this architect identifies as a conventional Polish kind for larger buildings – due to the fact that we talk about specified roofs.
He is not the first to submit to this proposition (it is slow!), since even before the first planet war besides designers not so distant from the Palace of Culture of the Viaduct and the Poniatowski Bridge (then: Cara Mikołaj), Polish, these characteristic brick towers deployed during this Vistula crossing besides topped with Renaissance atts.
And here begins the debate of fundamental importance, i.e. the Polish Renaissance, the Polish Baroque and the Polish national style, which we do not undertake to make here due to its large size. Let us remember that they are the guiding principles of this very daring project. Pitonia is, "to yet do something about this Palace of Culture", someway tame it, since this powerful building, by Poles-Catholics, is not ordered from anyone, nor fixed, but not demolished.
The Soviets have placed Renaissance attics on the Palace, indeed in Poland, but in fewer places, and already respective 100 years old; so what has the same The palace should be surrounded, too, according to Sebastian Pitonia, in the athletes, since this way the Palace is to be "advanced" and the space around it – as the Designer says – "what can be considered Polish", although in the essential mention to architecture just...
The palace which the “Polish” was decided by strangers. In turn we are to be hostages of this decision made by strangers (as after “Jalta”, “Lisbon” etc., and for example our Hungarian brothers after “Trian”).
However, in the past, not specified architectural-civilization problems have been successfully solved on a permanent basis. Here in the first half of the 13th century the Holy Crusader King Ferdinand (Spanish: San Fernando el Rey) enters the restored after centuries of Córdoba. And immediately, virtually from the march, on a pearl of Islam, so civilization and religiously alien architecture The large Mosque tells him to put the Cross of Christ on the ground, and in the interior of this building to execute the Holy Mass, gathering crowds of people and chivalry. In later times there were besides lofty baroque chapels.
Indeed, the creative freedom “on a natural root” was enjoyed by architects rising Spanish in the 16th century Escorial, and in the 20th century those who forged in the stone the world's largest Basilica in the Spanish Valley of the Deceased, and placed above it the world's highest Cross – a spatial presumption of 1 of a kind. We Poles present – as has already been written above – must someway mention to the previously existing Gigant Palace erected to us “in a gift” by no 1 who does not ask russian comrades.
Was it not a crucial event for our current situation that this journey to Poland was carried out by russian architects in autumn 1951? Are there any records of their observations and conclusions? What they took from the Polish architectural tradition, we already know. But what didn't they notice? And what did they announcement and reject? Or did individual tell them? If so, who was he and what was his relation with the tradition of Polish architecture and even Polish culture?
Because – as Mr. Pitoń – a dormitory of Rudniew and his companions were completely fresh in this area; and their peregrination to respective Polish cities lasted all 2 weeks; There was evidently no Vilnius or Lviv on this tour.
The Soviets – as we can see – rejected the Baroque, the Polish kind in a mass dimension, where these Renaissance works are beautiful and interesting, but fewer endemics scattered around the country; and the Baroque (and a kind of post-barok) is everywhere, in the countryside and in the city, in forms of both small, for example, roadside chapels, as well as in large, as lofty temples, erected in various regional varieties and in various periods of its own, or Baroque reign in Poland (and elsewhere).
It is besides a very Polish baroque and “post-Baroque” building of the residential streets and the feathers of the markets of Polish cities and towns, this bunk and this somewhat higher than one-story one-story one; there are castles, monasteries, palaces, manors, manor houses and various another objects of secular and ecclesiastical utility.
Nevertheless, the Baroque is just "ecclesiastical" and "ecclesiastical" due to the fact that it is simply Latin, so – but this is only our hypothesis – that is most likely why it has been rejected by the ungodly post- Orthodox Soviets; whereas the Renaissance, although Latin, is "ecclesiastical", so it was allowed to the heights of the Capital Palace named Stalin. How many baroque churches do we have in Poland (on Polish lands) and how many Renaissance churches? And the interior – the church and the secular. What is it... Renaissance? In the north of Poland, it is called manneristic. But the baroque subject recognizes everyone everywhere.
due to the fact that if we inactive travel in Poland, besides to those cities visited in 1951 by the architectural crew of the russian dormitory Lviv Rudniev, we must see this "not under the Attica" of the old Polish architecture, namely in large quantities – despite the demolition of war and post-war (sic!) – roofs inclined and various broken ways, intertwining in the inactive richness and universality of what is this Polish baroque, sometimes very lush, in many local varieties.
During the interwar period, the alleged national kind was sought on the basis of these designs in Poland, besides on the scale of larger buildings, including railway stations and large school buildings, usually with steep roofs, broken, multi-fall roofs, ready to receive dense rainfall.
A small earlier eclecticism and syncretism suitable for the lush architectural and urban creation of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries besides placed in our home alternatively than flat.
Stanislaw Noakowski's work comes to mind, but this author drew everything (also in another countries) by nature, giving any synthesis of the Polish national style. But Noakowski besides practiced architectural fantasy, which present we see as the direction of creation besides by Sebastian Pitonia, of course about the characteristics for this individual creator. They call Pitonia "Polish Gaudim"; and indeed – any features of his "gaudism" are found in the task discussed here, including in the form of these "organic towers".
“The Village and the Town” – a celebrated exhibition and album from 1916, after the demolition caused by the First planet War. How to rebuild all this in Polish? After planet War II, the communists approached the same question how differently, as in all the Poles for the last eighty years, to this day in a subversive and revolutionary way: the old Polish centuries-old architectural tradition, from barns beginning (!), through a single-family house, after a larger building, is now invalid for the 3rd generation.
Tear down and at the same place build any “modern” concretework watched by Hollywood C-D class films.
Art is “old and new” things, although all together form a reasonable string, but sometimes broken for various reasons. Attica was a novelty in Poland once. During the past post-war eighties, i.e. from 1945 onwards, so “for commune” and “now”, i.e. “after communion” Poles in the field of both tiny and large architecture continued their architectural tradition in respective waves. A lot to talk about.
At the same time, they did not introduce any clearly fresh quality, specified as, for example, with a cover of 4 100 years ago, this attica, later the feeria of Baroque, geometry of classicism, and before the Second planet War, this reserved modernism, in which kind it began to be built up extended churches, completed after the war, any of them raised from ruins.
What is peculiarly disturbing, is that during the period of “freedom”, that is, after 1989, it is alien, allowed here by the frequently bribed “Polish-language” factor, to decision on on a large scale to fill this nominally inactive “Polish” architectural space and – worse inactive urbanistic (!) monotonous boxwatt cheapochami, by naive natives seen as a refreshing breath of “free West” on our land. And that could besides be a lot to talk about, making comparisons with these earlier communist blocks.
A good Polish architect who specializes in tiny form ("a village and a town" in our time) complained in a radio message that now in Poland it is already a decent cowshed with conventional proportions to design, or to bet, "because a peasant, erstwhile he already has money, he wants something like an opera in Sydney" (sic!).
However, many another European nations do differently. In any places you will not know at first glance whether the building was built 50 years ago or 150 years ago, or possibly even earlier; likewise with the device of its interior, including its surroundings. It is simply “old and fresh things”.
“The village and the town” in the early 20th century implies architecture by nature of tiny things, a single family-billion-family; and we have traditions of adapting these conventional forms and proportions to the scale of medium-sized buildings and even large ones (those mentioned above, among others, stations and schools).
But it is not essential to adapt especially, since 2 generations earlier, before the 20th century, i.e. in the second half of the 19th century, wandering the Polish lands Napoleon Orda (1807-1883) gave to his fellow countrymen (so he dedicated the thing) a rich catalogue of drawings depicting our architecture in the condition in which it was then, so any objects in the form of only and until picturesque ruins, but others in large condition and full usable.
And that is the tradition of Polish architecture. Sebastian Pitoń in the task discussed here made a circumstantial choice and went into its Renaissance flow, the law of the creator giving it his, i.e. the Designer, direction. We, by no means denying the esthetics and functionality that he cited, including the costly to keep walking gardens on flat roofs, would advise us to clearly barricade this project, which does not conflict with its "nineteenth century" whether it is in the mid-19th century or in the late 19th century.
These are different historical varieties of the same, due to the fact that it is rich Polish architecture.
We besides have ideas of breaking (at least breaking) the concept of Mr.Ing.Pitonia, whether in terms of giving the planned objects functions another than those envisaged by the Designer, or in a horizontal dimension on a certain change in the layout of fresh objects around the Palace of Culture, or in a vertical dimension on... lowering the Palace itself (sic!), i.e. according to the intention of many, to actually demolish it (sic!), but only partially – from the top. But it's all going to go on.
C.D.N.
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